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Dell SC Series vs HPE Nimble Storage comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (7th)
Dell SC Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
27th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (3rd)
HPE Nimble Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
5th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.9%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Nimble Storage is 3.9%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Paul Pearson - PeerSpot reviewer
Works well, is easy to implement, and has upgrade analysis capabilities
We love the product. Pure Storage works really well. The CAT tool and also the ability to upgrade the unit's place grades are great. It allows for in-place control or upgrades. It's a very simple implementation. They have a good tool to analyze upgrades. The stability is good. Technical support has been excellent.
Steven McClendon - PeerSpot reviewer
Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering
I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.
Ajit Pratap Kundan - PeerSpot reviewer
A tool that offers protection against ransomware and other enterprise-level attacks
HPE Nimble Storage's cost is very high, making it one of its downsides. HPE Nimble Storage's cost is very high compared with any HCI solutions, like HPE's SimpliVity, Nutanix, VMware, or Dell VxRail. A person requires a special skill set to operate HPE Nimble Storage because there are hardly any solutions similar to Nimble Storage in the market. The product's support can be made faster and more responsive if HPE trains its partners in such a way that they acquire more expertise on Nimble Storage through the training sessions. HPE Nimble Storage is dependent on only VMware vSphere Hypervisor. In the future, HPE has to make Nimble Storage feasible with other hypervisors like Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix Acropolis, and RHEV, meaning it should be hypervisor agnostic.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"Customers are most impressed with SC's provisioning because you don't need to buy a large amount of storage upfront. It's pay-as-you-grow. It also has solid compression and duplication features."
"The performance benefits weren't surprising, we expected that. What we didn't expect were the densification benefits that we got out of going all-flash. We're able to put more applications on the arrays because of how all-flash performs. The way some of the application profiles have responded to all-flash has been really pleasing."
"One time, we had a drive fail and we were notified before we even saw it on the device."
"The most valuable feature is the no-forklift upgrade. While the thing is running, I can change out the controllers one at a time and keep the customer up and running. I can add shelves and storage and SSD drives or spinning drives to the system, while it's running. I can bring all that in and rebalance the load across the new disks or, if we take disks away, rebalance the load across what's remaining, and it just works."
"The flexibility of this solution has been valuable for our business."
"What is most valuable about the Dell EMC SC Series system was its reliability."
"This solution is easy to use."
"One of the most valuable features is the capability to switch between all-flash to hybrid, which have have actually done for one of our arrays. We started with the hybrid, with the limited if I'm not mistaken, and then over a period of time, we swapped all the hybrids with the SSDs. This was one of the big features because it gave us the capability to not stick with just one kind of media. Secondly, since it has sorted clustering, we were able to bring in the newer boxes and have it all clustered together. These were the two main features that we really looked into, which benefited our use case from an expansion/growth perspective. Another valuable feature is the ease of management."
"It's easy to use, it's just like 3PAR. I made clusters of 32 hosts with 50 volumes and that took barely an hour. I scripted a lot of it, filled in the names of volumes, the names of servers."
"We have seen our average latency go from four milliseconds to point four. Therefore, we are getting 10 times better performance down to the end user on everything. We have seen an increase in our IOPS by ten times."
"Their tech support is very professional, know their products, know what they do, and they are very informative in terms of keeping the customer updated."
"Scalability is another reason we chose to go with Nimble: upgrading to another storage array. If we need higher capacity or throughput, we can just replace controllers, we don't have to replace or forklift-upgrade the whole chassis."
"The solution is scalable."
"The quality of the service and management tools let us make contractual guarantees for storage performance for customers. That's something we couldn't do before."
"In the 20 days that we have been using this solution, it has been stable."
"The tool’s support is feasible."
 

Cons

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."
"This solution could be improved if overall performance was improved and operated with a higher speed and supported a higher volume of RAM."
"In terms of additional features, I would like to see some kind of I/O meter, to indicate what we are using in terms of performance. I would like to see automation with that, where it would give me the trends. I want to know those things easily, to help me know where issues are going to occur."
"We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out."
"There's always room for improvement in the operating code."
"While there's always room for improvement in everything, I can't really think of a specific feature of the solution that requires immediate attention."
"In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency."
"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."
"It's not very efficient anymore. There are better products out there."
"An area that needs improvement is extending the life of the device after five years."
"HPE Nimble Storage could be improved with some critical application or servers."
"Nimble requires its DNS to work in order to interface with VMware vCenter is a little thorn in my eye, but I am being nitpicky here."
"It would be ideal if all these enterprise-class high-performance products would come at a cheaper price."
"A feature that would be a nice addition to the next release would be a filer option. A filer option so that you could connect the sim or NFS or chips like NetApp does for NAS functionality."
"I would like to see integration with OneView, at least for reporting or some sort of monitoring."
"When we’re setting up the solution, making options available regarding the replication tool mechanism would be ideal."
"We would like there to be more enhanced features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
"This solution could be better priced in comparison with other vendors."
"The pricing is reasonable, but it is expensive."
"Always keep in mind, this is not just a enclosure with disks is a complete SAN as a service. There is software, license, and storage in one single solution."
"We have reviewed many platforms over the years. It is probably the best solution for its value."
"It's a very affordable solution."
"Support typically depends on the array. It can range anywhere from $7,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars."
"It has a good price point and offers some value-added enterprise features."
"The pricing of Dell EMC Compellent is competitive."
"If you are a super small company, the product is probably not right for you. It is out of your price range. Anything from mid-SMB up to enterprise, it is absolutely the right product."
"There is a monthly fee to use the solution."
"It is very pricey. You pay for what you get, and this storage solution is great. It is well worth the cost."
"HPE Nimble Storage didn't require a license at the time."
"There are no licensing costs for this solution."
"The price of HPE Nimble Storage is good."
"It is a CAPEX investment. Over the anticipated lifespan, I would say the pricing is $10,000 a month."
"The pricing is better than some of the competitors, such as Dell EMC."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
24%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Educational Organization
65%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Financial Services Firm
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
After implementation, there are limitations, such as the number of paths, file systems, and replication options. It f...
What do you like most about Dell SC Series?
I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?
I've always found the pricing of Dell SC Series very good. I believe the product is being phased out because the pric...
What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?
If Dell SC Series wasn't being phased out, adding an NVMe tier and secure snapshots like those on the PowerStore plat...
How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?
HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, z...
Which would you choose - HPE Nimble Storage or HPE Primera?
HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. Th...
What do you like most about HPE Nimble Storage?
The solution's predictive analytics is good. It helps to save costs.
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
SC Series Storage, Compellent
Nimble Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric
Ace Relocation, Atkins Nutritionals, Berkeley Research Group, Canadian International School, City of Hot Springs, Clackamas County, Corona-Norco Unified School District, Ideal Integrations, Linear Technology, P&O Maritime, Retail Apparel Group (RAG), Virtual Radiologic
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. HPE Nimble Storage and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.